Swiss Archives, Volume 1

From: Andy
To: Mom
Sent: Tuesday, September 26
Subject: Gift ideas

Hi,

Still no phone line so no telling when this gets to go out, but no hurry.* I was just thinking...I don't know if you're planning to send any care packages, but Andy would really really like a couple of bags of ground Starbucks French roast coffee. I know that must sound insane to you since I'm living in country famous for its coffee, but so far what I've been buying at the grocery store is FOUL. I can't stand it. Maybe I'm getting the proportions wrong since I'm in the metric system here, but damn it, I don't like this stuff. And also maybe it's the foreign milk. Whatever.

That pillow I bought sucks. Remember I said it was huge? Well, it's also down and cheap so really it would wad up and fit in a shoebox. No wonder it was marked "Aktion." (That apparently means "sale" here. You can walk into a department store and see signs for "Super Hot Aktion" (yes, w/English words) and that just means "Clearance.") That doesn't mean you should send a pillow, I'll deal with it, I'm just whining. I've had firmer mashed potatoes.

Three ring binders here do not exist. Only 2- or 4-ring. Seriously! I've looked. I packed all this music into one binder to bring it here that was too tight to turn the pages, so I wanted to buy another one...either I give up or I punch a bunch of extraneous new holes in the music. Annnnnnoooooyyyying! And there's no bar soap, apparently, only "Douche Gel." (A douche is a shower, but I feel weird buying this stuff.)

Love,
Andy

*For the first several weeks of my stay in Zurich I had no phone service because the management where I was living neglected to explain what exactly it was I needed to do to get the line turned on. I actually wrote this email sometime before 9/26/00, but had to save it on my laptop in the "waiting to be sent" folder until I could get the phone line and sign on to the internet; it was then sent on the 26th.